What in the world is wild-cow milking? California county officials ban ‘brutal’ event
CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to more accurately describe how the wild cow milking event works.
Updated story continues below:
A practice fundamental to early settlements in California and as old as the country’s western frontier no longer has a place in certain parts of the state, officials have decided.
It’s known as wild cow milking, and it’s a staple of local ranching and rodeo culture, according to Mercury News. But it’s also been called a “brutal” practice that animal-rights activists and some veterinarians have vocally opposed.
Rodeo staff start by separating a mama cow from her calf before turning her loose in the arena. Two men, one on horseback and one on foot, chase the mother cow, and the mounted roper lassos her. The guy on foot, known as the “mugger,” holds the cow down while the roper dismounts from his horse and “forcibly milks her” into a bottle and then races the bottle to a finish line. Whichever team does it the fastest wins the event, according to Mercury News.
Alameda County supervisors voted unanimously to ban the practice in unincorporated parts of the county after hours of public comment and discussion at the Tuesday, Sept. 20 meeting.
It’s an unsanctioned event in terms of professional rodeos, CBS Bay Area News reported. Known as “the world’s oldest and largest sanctioning body for rodeos,” the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association doesn’t include it as one of their approved events, the outlet reported.
“Rodeos have had their brutal day, and now, like those Confederate statues, belong in the dustbins of history,” anti-rodeo organizer Eric Mills argued at an Alameda County supervisor’s meeting in August, according to the Mercury News.
Animal-rights activists like Mills consider the spectacle cruel and inhumane and have mobilized and advocated for the ban for years.
County supervisors previously banned mutton-busting events on the basis of animal cruelty in 2019. In that event, children would “leap onto the backs of sheep and force them to go for a ride,” Mercury News reported. Veterinarians told officials that the animals, which have not evolved to carry the weight of a human on their backs, were often left injured by the stunt.
The use of spurs, ropes, and “bucking straps” — leather straps fastened around a horses’ or bulls’ sensitive flank area to make them lash out with their hind legs — were also on the chopping block at the meeting, according to the county’s meeting notes. Rodeo enthusiasts and local ranchers balked at such a ban, and supervisors compromised, acknowledging that prohibiting the controversial gear would threaten the sport of rodeo itself, according to Mercury News.
Scott Dorenkamp, livestock program and government relations manager with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, told CBS Bay Area News his organization was pleased that supervisors opted not to ban the “equipment essential to a quality rodeo product.”
Supervisor Richard Valle said at the meeting that he took the opportunity to establish a middle ground that would both protect rodeos and ban the practice of wild cow milking.
“Animals, they don’t step up to the podium,” he said. “They don’t get a chance to speak. Who speaks for them?”
This story was originally published September 22, 2022 at 1:39 PM.
